Name: Turnips with Cream
Ingredients: Turnips; Boiling stock; Butter; Coarse sea salt; Flour; Pepper; Cream; Sugar

Why it works: Turnip and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,874 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Turnips with Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Pare and wash the turnips in hot water.
Place them in boiling stock with a little butter and salt.
Boil gently until tender, keeping the saucepan covered.
Pour off the broth.
In a separate pan, mix flour with a little butter, a pinch of pepper, and cream.
Add the mixture to the turnips and boil again.
Serve very hot.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,874 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Turnip + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,252 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, pepper, cream, sugar):

Leekfits better
Arrowrootfits better
Capsicumfits better
Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, cream, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.